Excerpt from
We had joy, we had fun: the "lost" recording artists of the seventies
Written by Barry Scott
Published in the U.S. & Great Britain in 1994 by Faber & Faber, Inc.
"A year before we had the hit record, I was in Canada riding my bike around and going to
school," Tony remembers. "A year later, I was on radio and TV. I would say it was a big change
in my life. I ended up having to go to private school. My friends didn't treat me the same.
Suddenly, I was a star in their eyes. I'd only been away from our hometown for a year and
suddenly my best friends are saying, 'Tony, it's me. Do you remember me?' We went to our
cousin's house. People who were our neighbors and our friends would swarm around the house
and look in the windows. It was very strange."
Listening to the first single and the rest of the tracks on the debut album, one can't deny
the power and strength of Tony's voice. His vocal ability set him apart from most other teen
idols of the seventies. Tony took some voice classes, but he credits the producer, Walt Meskell,
for his vocal skill:
"He worked my butt off. We worked on the song and worked on the song. He was telling me how to
open my voice. I think it was a matter of singing it and singing it. I had a vocal style where
I would belt it out. I ended up getting vocal nodes. I almost had to have surgery on my throat.
Thankfully, they went away."
The DeFranco Family continued their media blitz. They appeared on "American Bandstand" nine times.
They performed on "Dinah", and in prime time on the "Jack Benny Special" and the "Sonny & Cher
Show". They never made it onto Merv Griffin's popular daytime talk show, however.
"They wanted us to audition," says Tony about the Merv Griffin show. "We said 'What?!' It wasn't
really big-headed. We were just saying why should we audition? We've been on many shows. So our
manager said no. I don't know if that's the truth, but that's what our manager told us."
The group's second single release, "Abracadabra", became a Top 40 hit at the start of 1974. Culled
from their debut album while the follow-up was about to be released, it continued in the bubblegum
tradition.
"I like that song," says Tony of "Abracadabra". "I have fond memories of it. There's a lot of
people out there that say, 'Oh God, listen to that stuff. It's just so bubblegum.' I felt that way
for a long time, because people made me feel that way. I don't think the songs were stupid.
There's a lot of songs sung by adults that lyrically and melodically are just totally stupid to
me. I thought that it fit perfectly. I was thirteen years old and I thought it was right in the
vein of the market we were trying to reach."
But everything was not perfect for the group. The second album was a bit of a struggle, with
management telling the producer which songs to record and the DeFranco Family wanting more
participation in the process. They believed in sticking with the same musical path while being
allowed to mature a bit. Producer Walt Meskell elected to include more of his self-penned tunes,
while the DeFrancos fought to record a song Benny had written. The bubblegum path continued, with
no sign of growth.
"Our career could have been much longer if we had taken steps to change things as they went along,"
says Tony. "We tried to explain to our management that you could only do so much with the teen
magazines, which was great--it was a great stepping stone to go from there--but from then on you have
to mature on your material and also your image. They couldn't see it that way and I think that was
part of the downfall."
The second album, "Save The Last Dance for Me", contained their third and final Top 40 hit. The title
track reached #18 in 1974. It was one of the remake songs, originally a #1 tune for the Drifters in
1960, which management had pushed the group to record.
The DeFranco Family began their summer concert tour to promote the album in June of 1974. After the
tour, they began to work on their third LP. It was at this point that everything unravelled.
"Various people--management, the president of the label [Russ Regan at 20th Century]--started making
heavy demands on what songs should be sung. The songs were just corny old remakes. We said no.
They thought we'd finally gotten big heads and we didn't know what we were talking about. We felt at
the time that we had had success with the first two albums and the same producer. You don't mess with
success. They wanted to go with a different producer. They wanted to go with Mike Curb. 'Why Mike Curb?
He produces the Osmonds. We don't want to sound like the Osmonds.' Naturally, being as young as we were
and naive, they basically pushed us into using Mike Curb. I don't want to speak ill of Mike, but we
ended up doing some tracks that sounded like Osmond leftovers. We sang on it and that was a failure."
Mike Curb eventually had more teen idol successes in the seventies with Donny & Marie Osmond, Shaun
Cassidy, and Leif Garrett.
Meanwhile, the DeFranco Family still had no third album...
As easy as you could say "Abracadabra", the DeFranco Family's recording career came to a halt. The 1974
summer concert tour was their last. Tony has tried ever since to shed his early teen-idol image:
"I have a hard time getting rid of the teenybopper image. At the time, I didn't mind it, but it seems
to hang on to me like a bad nightmare. People won't let go of that stigma. I was proud of it at the time
and I am still very proud of it. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all again."
© 1994 by Barry Scott
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